And we urge him to refrain from issuing any new permits until the most stringent, comprehensive drilling rules have been put into place and a hard-charging enforcement team has been positioned to prevent slipshod drilling practices from poisoning New York's air, water and land.
He said on Tuesday that he had accomplished much of what he set out to do, writing stringent new standards for drilling safety and environmental protection, moving revenue collection to another part of Interior, improving training of inspectors and imposing new conflict of interest rules.
"Due to the lack of infrastructure in the Arctic region, drilling requirements are more stringent up there," Greg Julian, the press secretary for BSEE, told VICE News.
State officials counter that their proposed drilling rules will impose a stringent waste tracking system.
The Obama administration's scientific panel, originally charged with peer review of a moratorium that would pause the riskier drilling operations, had proposed far less stringent requirements than what emerged, i.e. they proposed a moratorium on new drilling at a thousand feet or greater.
Allred would like to see more stringent standards for remediation of well sites after drilling is completed.
Its stringent regulations have prevented any known instances of groundwater contamination from previous horizontal drilling or hydraulic fracturing projects in the state.
As an example, Harden points to more stringent regulations in other countries, such as Norway, which requires companies to drill relief wells at the same time as any deepwater well.
Stringent antipollution regulations helped to ultimately dissuade oil companies from completing their plans for extensive offshore drilling in an ecologically fragile marine environment where a significant spill would be an ecological catastrophe.
Disaster countermeasures include seismic retrofitting for existing facilities so that they meet the country's stringent earthquake-resistance standards, the construction of earthquake-resistant buildings, including accommodation at the athletes' village, emergency response drills and the stockpiling of food and other essentials.
